From the Archives - Admiral Joseph M. Reeves Explains Naval Regulations
Although today largely forgotten, Joseph Mason Reeves
(1872-1948) was one of the most innovative officers in the history of the U.S.
Navy, beginning with the invention of the football helmet, while still at Annapolis. Although a seasoned "Big Gun"
officer with command of a battleship under his belt, Reeves was also a
qualified naval airman, having earned "aviation observer" wings, and
became "the Father of Carrier Aviation," making extraordinary contributions
to the development of the new arm of sea power.
Once, around 1930, while serving as COMAIRONS (Commander,
Air Squadrons, Battle Fleet) one of Reeves' staff officers asked why he didn't
formally published the tentative guidelines for air tactics that the fleet's
airmen had been using.
According to Eugene E. Wilson, another staff officer who was
also present, and later went on to a very successful career in the aircraft
industry, "the Old Man sat back in his chair, folded his hands in his lap,
lifted them over and behind his head and leaned back with a smile fingering his
beard." Then he said,
".
. . I'm surprised. Don't you realize,
that once you've printed this and put it between covers, every dumb oaf in the
Navy that's too tired to think -- and that covers a lot of them -- will think
its part of the Navy Regulations and not something alive. They'll quite using their brains. They'll refuse to act until they've looked up
the rule in the book. They'll become as
ossified as those old coots who command battleships.
".
. . I'll never approve of printing tactical instructions. We've got to keep them flexible. You can mimeograph them and put them in a loose-leaf
binder, but print them? Over my dead
body."
Reeves, who had commanded the Navy's first "carrier
task force," during maneuvers in 1929, served for many years as COMAIRONS,
then commanded the Battle Force, which included all the battleships and
carriers in the fleet, and was Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Fleet from 1934
to 1936. Although he was retired by the
time the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor (a feat
which he had accomplished several times during maneuvers in the 1930s), he was
recalled to active duty and served as an advisor to the Navy until 1947.
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